By The Huffington Post News Editors
By: Rod Pyle, SPACE.com Contributor
Published: 04/05/2013 06:25 AM EDT on SPACE.com
PASADENA, Calif. — A team of students has come up with an ambitious plan to send astronauts to a Martian moon, winning a Caltech space exploration contest in the process.
Team Voyager won the Caltech Space Challenge Friday (March 29), edging out Team Explorer in a hard-fought contest. Both 16-person teams devised manned missions to the tiny Mars moon Phobos, contributing ideas to help humanity push farther out into the solar system than it’s ever gone before.
“Both teams performed exceptionally well,” said Jakob van Zyl, a senior executive at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., and a Space Challenge judge. “Their enthusiasm was a pleasure to observe.”
Caltech Space Challenge
A total of 32 graduate and undergraduate students representing 21 universities and 11 different countries participated in the 2013 Caltech Space Challenge, which ran from March 25 through March 29 at the university’s campus in Pasadena. [The Boldest Mars Missions in History]
Scientists and engineers from Caltech, JPL and a number of aerospace firms advised the two student teams and judged their final mission plans.
Some big names in the history of space exploration also helped inspire the students. For example, Buzz Aldrin — the second person to set foot on the moon — gave a lecture on the complexities of traveling from Earth to Mars and back via the Red Planet‘s two minuscule moons, Phobosand Deimos.
“These young people are driven by a sense of exploration, and these missions have been designed using the right place… Phobos,” said Aldrin, as he watched the exploration plans take shape. He was also impressed by their choice of using primarily commercial launch systems, such as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
“The number one requirement for space right now is to recover the investment we have already made,” Aldrin said.
Flying to a Martian moon
Teams Explorer and Voyager were instructed to figure out a way to send three or four astronauts to a Martian moon, departing in 2032. Once there, the explorers would conduct up to eight extravehicular forays and then return to Earth with geological samples. [Giant Leaps: Top Milestones of Human Spaceflight]
The two teams worked in isolation from each other and with little sleep or exposure to sunshine.
“The last few days were really exhausting,” said participant Andrew Dahir, who hails from Australia. “But our spirits were high the whole time, and we came together as a team to explore the engineering aspects of this mission and to really focus on the details.”
Each team carefully considered the same problems that NASA and other space agencies have been working on for decades. These include moving large masses of equipment and fuel into Earth orbit; providing life support and consumables for astronauts during the long voyage to Mars; the prevention of muscle and …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post